Original Xbox controller concepts are some of the most bizarre you've ever seen

Video game historians and archaeologists, have I got a treat for you today. Video game developer and designer on the original Xbox, Seamus Blackley, has decided to share concept art of the original Xbox's controllers. And if you thought a black box that formed a giant X and controllers so large they could bludgeon someone to death were weird, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

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I used to joke that if you pried open an original Xbox, you'd find a Dreamcast hiding inside. These controller concepts, with their VMU-like memory cards and odd shapes, certainly don't dissuade that feeling. Blackley says there's a reason for that though.

"These look as they do because at the time Dreamcast was king. Influence," he wrote in one tweet. "Concept designers often copy what's in front of them. Xbox was its own beast," he said in another. You know what though? I'll trade the VMU rip-off seen in these concepts for the break-away cords that we got. Because at the time, that was genius.